U.S. changes mind about RFID-enabled passports (sort of)

Following some intense pressure from privacy advocates, the U.S. government has admitted that their plan to put RFID
chips in people's passports had some potentially huge security problems. The original design had an RFID chip that
would broadcast personal information to speed up the processing of travellers, but in an interview Tuesday Frank E.
Moss, deputy assistant secretary of state for passport services, said: "You do perhaps face a risk of a reading without
the knowledge of the passport bearer, and that is obviously something we want to protect against." Um, yeah. But
despite the many possible problems with RFID technology, the government is still going ahead with plans to use them in
passports, only now they'll be more secure. The new plan is to use data printed on the new passport to unlock the RFID
chip before it transmits anything.